Guantanamo Prison Bad Move: Marine General

By Jeanette Steele
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. September 25, 2009
Courtesy Of Sign On San Diego

CAMP PENDLETON — Saying the United States lost the moral high ground, the outgoing Marine general who built and ran the Guantanamo Bay military prison in early 2002 said he quickly concluded that it was the wrong path and that the cells he constructed should be emptied.

Retiring Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert, now commander of seven Marine bases on the West Coast, also said bringing the remaining prisoners to Camp Pendleton — something the White House has discussed — is a bad idea because it could threaten the base's main job of training Marines.

Lehnert will step down next week after heading the Marine Corps Installations West command since 2005. He has guided a massive construction campaign at the bases he oversees from an office at Camp Pendleton.

In early 2002, then-Brig. Gen. Lehnert was commander of Joint Task Force 160, the unit given the job of quickly building prison cells at the U.S. base in Cuba for “enemy combatants” captured in Afghanistan. It was meant to be a short-lived job, and Lehnert left after 100 days.

“I came to the conclusion very soon that this probably wasn't the right way to go,” Lehnert, 58, said during a media round table yesterday. “Probably before I left Guantanamo, I was of the opinion it needed to go away as soon as possible.”

Lehnert said the United States has a moral obligation to treat the prisoners humanely. He added that he wasn't in charge of interrogations, which were handled by a different task force. That delineation of duties caused “creative tension” in the officer ranks, Lehnert said.

Human-rights organizations have criticized the U.S. government for holding people at Guantanamo without trial, sometimes for years, and for not following established standards of treatment for prisoners of war.

A defense attorney for one Canadian detainee at Guantanamo said Lehnert is “absolutely right,” but he questioned why the general is speaking out now.

“If he thought that at the time, why didn't he do anything about it?” asked Colby Vokey, a former Marine defense attorney who served at Camp Pendleton before retiring last year.

Lehnert said he made his views known through “the appropriate chain of command.”

One of President Barack Obama's first actions after taking office in January was ordering the closure of the Guantanamo base, where roughly 800 people have been held over the years. Slightly more than 200 prisoners are still there.

U.S. officials hope to prosecute some of them in federal court and others before military commissions. The prisoners could be moved to U.S. soil, creating the problem of where to hold them.

Camp Pendleton has been mentioned as being on the list. Miramar Marine Corps Air Station is doubtful as a location because of its proximity to large civilian neighborhoods, Lehnert said.